


light water

by threadoflife



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Gen, Happy Ending, Holmes Brothers, M/M, Mycroft and Sherlock as kids, Pirate Sherlock, Post-Series, Series 4, Speculation, Water, i hate everything, so happy we will die, they are happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-01
Updated: 2016-12-01
Packaged: 2018-09-03 13:26:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8715691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threadoflife/pseuds/threadoflife
Summary: Sherlock had always loved tea, but water came as close second.





	

**Author's Note:**

> THIS IS ALL MARCELOCK'S FAULT WHO DID THIS AMAZING WATER = EMOTIONS META THING OH MY GOD I AM STILL DYING I HAVE NOT RECOVERED FROM THIS FUCKIN 15 SECONDS TRAILER I HATE SHERLOCK WITH A PASSION SO FFFFFFF!!!!!!ING MUCH!!!!!!
> 
> wrote this in one go on my phone, here's the somewhat revised version, forgive me the roughness and rawness of this BUT I HATE SHERLOCK SO FUCKING MUCH

When Sherlock was a child, he didn’t have a sweet tooth. 

Mycroft did. He liked hot chocolate and warm, honeyed milk, drinking them all day long. Their parents tried to instil the routine of morning tea, water over the day, and tea again at dinner, but it never stuck. Mycroft as a child, Sherlock reflects, was something one—in an addled state, of course—might call charming, even lovable. He fraternised with the household staff, but Sherlock knew even back then that this was only because it suited Mycroft’s own purposes. Mycroft had always been a schemer, an opportunist, and it had started out with hot chocolate and warm, honeyed milk.

Sherlock wasn’t like that, as child. He did like the occasional hot chocolate for Christmas but he never had it on ordinary days. Even back then he had always been fondest of tea, with water as a close second.

Whenever Sherlock and Mycroft returned from their games from the Holmeses’ backyard—and Mycroft had played First Mate more often to Sherlock’s Captain than they both like to admit now—they had grinned at each other in the kitchen over their glasses.

Mycroft had sipped primly at his warm milk while Sherlock gulped down one glass of water after the other, as if starved.

*

One of the first and only things Sherlock remembers from his junkie days is that when he woke up, Mycroft was there.

Though they weren’t close anymore in these days, Mycroft was still the person closest to Sherlock. That was before Lestrade, before Mrs Hudson, and even longer before John.

Mycroft’s closeness had always come conditionally. The days of pirate plays in the backyard were long over by then.

Sherlock vividly remembers the details of waking up to Mycroft: to his brother’s face disappearing periodically into obscurity through the dim light from the candle flickering nearby. When his face was visible, it was pale, and ghostly, and Sherlock thought that Mycroft was reacting as it if were his body and brain that had nearly been destroyed by toxic chemicals, not Sherlock’s. 

Mycroft had always been able to imitate concern much too professionally. Maybe that’s where Sherlock has his acting skills from.

Mycroft had held out a hand to Sherlock, his fingers wrapped carefully around a glass of water. Sherlock had stared at it, back up at Mycroft’s face—with all that damned, fake concern—and his heart had given a lurch, wretched thing that it was. When he was younger, Sherlock was so much more susceptible to displays of affection. It’s not one of his favourite things to remember.

Sherlock had taken the glass. He’d brought it to his lips. He’d sipped at it, with his eyes over the rim of it on Mycroft, just as he had done when he was a child.

Mycroft wasn’t drinking with him now. It was only Sherlock.

As soon as the water touched his lips, Sherlock grimaced, and, coughing, threw the glass at the floor. It shattered, and the sound of it was violent.

The water was stale. It was bitter. He couldn’t drink a drop more of it, though his throat was scratchy, dehydrated as he was.

Mycroft’s love had always come conditionally: this time, it seemed, it had come stale and bitter, and Sherlock couldn’t take it, so he let it shatter to pieces on the floor like so many shards of glass.

*

When Sherlock begins living in 221B, he rarely has anything but tea. 

Oh, he drinks the occasional cup of coffee whenever he needs the caffeine for cases stretching through endless nights. Usually, though, it’s tea. Tea for breakfast, tea for dinner, tea for lunch—that is, if he’s eating at all. He also has tea without food, obviously, all the time. John takes to monitoring his sugar intake fastidiously once he sees that Sherlock takes his teas with at least two sugar cubes each, and it’s not as annoying as Sherlock expected.

After a while, all around 221B, random glasses of water start to appear. Whether Sherlock is lying prone on his bed staring at the ceiling deep in thought—whether he’s in his Mind Palace while sitting in his armchair before the fire at night—whether he’s lying with his body draped upside down over the sofa, the back of his head touching the floor and his feet flat against the wallpaper—there are numerous glasses of water: on his bedside table, on the table behind his armchair, and even carefully on the floor next to his head. 

He catches Mrs Hudson leaving these glasses, and because she tuts over him to drink more—doesn’t he look ever so pale? —he drinks them dutifully as she watches him. To shut her up.

It’s hateful, these slow processes of domestication. First John and the sugar, now Mrs Hudson and his water intake. What is it with these people?

Or rather: what is it with him, obeying? _Indulging_?

*

The first time he is aware of John doing the same, leaving water either in glasses or 0,5 l bottles right next to him wherever he is, he almost can’t believe it. It’s not that he’s surprised that John cares—of course he isn’t: John’s a caretaker above all, and he can’t help fussing over the people around him, it’s like a compulsion—but it’s accompanied by a rush of warmth that is less urgent, less warm than the one he has in response to Mrs Hudson. 

The rush of warmth Sherlock experiences when this happens is immediate: heavy, weighty, and pressing. It’s quite hot at times too, pooling in his lower belly instead of just his chest. 

And it aches. The ache is something that only ever happens inside his chest. He can’t explain why.

For some equally incomprehensible reason, he never accepts John’s water, doesn’t drink it in front of him. John doesn’t nag him to do it. John, though persistent, is still respectful. He leaves water in a relentless but unobtrusive way, so that Sherlock is constantly reminded of its presence—of his transport requiring sustenance—without feeling controlled. Normally Sherlock’s hackles would have risen long ago, but John’s quiet steadiness feels okay. 

Safe, almost.

Still, Sherlock only ever drinks the water John leaves behind when John is out of the room. 

And when he does, he drinks it in one go, as if starved.

*

Sherlock has never liked coffee much.

It’s necessary for the caffeine when he’s elbows deep—head deep, rather—into a case, but even then it’s mostly hateful. He avoids it when he doesn’t have to drink it, and usually, when John is at home, he avoids coffee too. John only ever has coffee when he’s out on a date with a woman, or at home after he’s been out with one, or when he has a girlfriend for two or three weeks. That’s when he drinks coffee all the time. Sherlock despises it with unsettling force, and he spends his nights thinking obsessively about a chemical weapon that could destroy the entirety of the species Coffea. His toes wriggle gleefully whenever he visualises the plant’s roots rotting away.

When he’s gone those two years to take out Moriarty, he drinks coffee for the energy. It makes him jittery, and restless, and he doesn’t like it, but needs must. 

In rare moments of peace, he has tea, with two sugar cubes. He repeats the periodic table to himself over and over in order not to think of home.

Once he’s back he inhales tea as if it’s the only drink in the world. It only lasts for a while and begins to slowly but gradually fade, until he stops completely. He doesn’t care to find out why: he only knows that whenever he thinks of drinking tea, Myroft’s stale, bitter glass of water comes to mind, and he can’t drink it. He just can’t. It’s like a physical repulsion.

So he drinks coffee instead, and even more coffee on those days that Janine is over. He drinks it without sugar. He drinks it black. It tastes just as bitter as Mycroft’s water, but for some reason it goes down his throat without trouble.

He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about any of it.

*

Two years after the debacle with Mary, Sherlock’s drinking habits steady again.

He has tea, like he used to do when he was a child: with John in the morning over breakfast (which they have regularly now) and for dinner, when John makes the thing with the beans. Every now and then, they share red wine for dinner, smiling at each other over their glasses, their gazes locked. 

One day, John is out when Mycroft comes over. Mycroft declines the tea when Sherlock offers it; he declines the coffee; he even declines the warm milk Sherlock finds himself uncharacteristically offering (with a scoff, of course).

Mycroft just looks at him, and Sherlock swallows, and for once doesn’t evade his look. Under Mycroft’s solid, piercing stare, Sherlock’s back straightens, and he marches into the kitchen, reaches for a glass, and fills it with water. He brings it to Mycroft. Their fingers brush when Mycroft takes the glass.

It feels weirdly like an offering. Sherlock isn’t sure what he’s offering, and his hands are trembling a bit. He stands like John does, at parade rest, with his hands behind his back to hide it.

Mycroft knows, of course. His eyes soften, and, his eyes still on Sherlock, he takes a cautious, slow sip of the water. It can’t be stale or bitter because he doesn’t flinch or grimace. It’s normal water, in a glass that Sherlock gave to Mycroft, and Mycroft is drinking from it, and when he’s done, he says, “Thank you.”

Sherlock’s throat is dry, but his eyes are not.

*

They leave Angelo’s just after midnight, stumbling out into the street somewhat tipsily. Their legs do not obey their brains, and for once Sherlock has never minded his transport forsaking him less: their shoulders are pressed together, their hands almost touch, and their fingers brush, every now and then. It feels glorious. It feels like everything. Though the night is dark around them, Sherlock is aglow, and everything is bright to him. John, beside him, is the brightest. His conductor of light, his fixed point in a changing age. His John.

When it begins to rain, suddenly, they don’t rush forward. The rain feels warm and comfortable, even if it’s coming down in buckets. They don’t begin to break into a run to reach the safety of 221B: they stop, stop walking, right there in the midst of the street. They just stand there, breathing together, in sync, their bodies close.

Then, John’s hand suddenly finds Sherlock’s. His fingers slip in between Sherlock’s like they did so many years ago, but there’s no need to run now. There’s no need to run at all. 

Maybe there never was. They didn’t know. Now they do.

Sherlock turns around, slowly, and his heart doesn’t pound in panic. He’s calm. He’s never felt calmer in his life, or saner, or righter. 

His entire life led up to this: John Watson in the rain, staring up at him through long lashes, blinking against all the water that keeps spilling down on them. Loneliness, overdoses, misunderstandings, heartbreak, a bullet to the chest, Moriarty returning—none of this matters. It was worth it. All those wounds, they were worth it, worth this one moment, for John Watson in the rain to stare up at him with eyes wet from different things but the rain. In this moment, they’re the same. Sherlock’s eyes are wet from different things but the rain, too. 

When they kiss, they kiss with smiling mouths.

There is water all around them. It’s steady, and quiet, warm, and aching no longer.

**Author's Note:**

> here go hurt over some gif sets:
> 
> http://wssh-watson.tumblr.com/post/153900225587/johnlockshire-gregoryhouse-wow-water-is-gay


End file.
